Breaking news this morning and curiosity is a smashing success. The NASA Mars rover touched down this morning right there on the red planet a daring mission with -- more to -- And the landing capped a journey that lasted more than eight months and covered more than 350. Miles. -- small craft called curiosity will begin the work of answering some of the biggest mysteries of space. And for the scientists behind the mission look at that the landing was -- moments of pure -- a thrilling conclusion to a lot of tension. And they had a reason to party that -- And now for the latest on this very costly mission let's go right to the Jet Propulsion Lab. In passing leader. ABC's -- and does live at the nerve center for this mission Clayton good morning can you give us an idea how complicated this landing lives. Good morning Robin sunny out there are some very excited Mars geeks here that tonight and I mean that -- the very best possible way. The -- Mars curiosity rover still is not only on the ground it's already sending back pictures take a look at these pictures we've got. At least a couple photos already from -- from the surface of planet Mars and really there was so much that could have gone wrong in this landing this was a complicated landing using technologies that NASA had never tried before. And one thing that I learned what I thought was fascinating is that. Scientists were able to test in pieces all of the things they needed. To do this landing but because Mars and earth have such different atmosphere -- they were never able to test it all together. So really the first time that this is all been tested together that it's all actually happened was tonight on the surface of Mars. -- -- -- -- this was a huge moment he saw the -- is there of the NASA folks celebrating now that is there kind of what is the Nixon where we go from here. -- over the next step few days they tell us they're going to do you -- about health check out with curiosity. They have to kind of get it online and make sure all the systems are functioning properly so far all is always good. In the next few days we should start to see some some high resolution pictures so nice color pictures. Even some high definition video from. The landing and from the rover itself so we'll start to get some of that and then in the next few weeks curiosity will start to. Go around this crater that it landed in this the gale crater which scientists believe was once filled with water and of course that is. One of the building blocks of life so they are looking for the signs that. This area might have been habitable for life either in the past may be in the president. And then it will also scoot around this gigantic three mile high. Kill in the middle of this crater looking for all sorts of geologic clues to -- Mars -- Thanks ABC's claims -- out reporting live up for us from Pasadena.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.